‘But she married Handy,’ I said.
‘Her family may not have given her much choice in the matter. If she was anything like me, she probably didn’t even meet her husband until their wedding.’
And after that, I suppose, Star had made the best of it. I had a sudden painfully vivid recollection of how she had been in life: a busy, practical woman, fully occupied in supervising her large household even in late pregnancy.
‘Well, it explains the turkey chicks, anyway,’ I said.
Kite asked ‘What turkey chicks?’
‘Handy’s father in law asked how his turkey chicks were doing. You know what they say: the presence of an adulterer kills them – they just fall over and die.’
Red Macaw’s mother closed her eyes for a few moments, and I wondered what she was seeing behind their lids: her son as she had last seen him, perhaps, or as he had been as a young man, or possibly as he might be now.
‘I’m not ashamed of what my son did. I’m too old for that. There were rumours. I heard them in the marketplace, and in other women’s houses when I went visiting. Gossip, whispers that suddenly stopped when I entered the courtyard. I ignored them.’
‘How did it happen?’ Kite asked.
‘It was years ago, twelve or thirteen, I think. Most of the men in this parish were called up to go to war. My son had been wounded on his last expedition and couldn’t accompany them. So he stayed at home.’
I could guess the next part. ‘But Handy went.’
‘It seems so.’
‘And while he was away…’
‘Red Macaw was at home to start with, recovering from his wounds. Then he got better. There wasn’t any work to be done in the fields, since it was winter. So in the end he was left without much to do except potter around the parish...’
‘And go calling on old friends.’ Kite completed the sentence for her. ‘No wonder nobody would ever tell me what the big secret was.’
The old woman agreed. ‘It wasn’t a thing for a policeman’s ears. It would have meant death for both of them. Even her husband wouldn’t have been able to save her.’
‘How long did this go on?’ I asked.
‘All winter, I suppose, and into the spring. Throughout the campaigning season. Why she allowed it to happen in the first place, I don’t know. She was bored and lonely, I suppose, and perhaps things between her and her husband weren’t good. I gather her parents regretted their choice of a bridegroom for her quite quickly.’ The last words came out with an unpleasant cackle. ‘She ended the affair before the warriors returned – but I think it was a long war.’
‘And what did your son do then?’
‘Nothing. I couldn’t understand it. It was as if he were waiting for something to happen. And even when it did, he seemed to go on waiting, and watching from a distance. I couldn’t persuade him to move on, or let go.’
Lily asked quietly: ‘What was the thing that happened?’
I glanced out of the doorway, towards where I supposed the boy to be lurking, assuming he had had his drink and not simply gone home. I tried not to think about how we were going to answer his inevitable questions. I tried to put myself in his position, asking myself how I might feel if I had just discovered for the first time that my mother had been an adulteress, but I could not imagine it. I was fairly sure that any man making improper suggestions to my mother could count himself lucky if she merely threw him into the nearest canal.
When I turned back to the old woman I found that she had been looking in the same direction as I had. And to my astonishment, I saw that she was weeping, tears making thin, glistening tracks over her cheeks.
‘He was born nine months after they parted,’ she whispered. ‘He doesn’t know.’
It was now obvious why Handy and his family had been so reluctant to talk about his relationship with Red Macaw. They had been trying to protect his dead wife’s reputation and hide the truth from the child who believed he was his.
Precious Light was weeping for her grandson.
Snake rejoined us, to sit in brooding silence while Kite and I told Precious Light what had been happening in the parish since her son had left. She listened with apparent indifference while we described the bodies we had found and the attack on Spotted Eagle and me during the night.
‘So now you’re looking for sorcerers and monsters,’ was all she could find to say when we had finished.
‘And a three-captive warrior who lost part of his cloak,’ Kite added. ‘Which is what made us think of Red Macaw.’
‘What would my son be doing following a woman’s funeral procession?’ Precious Light snapped. ‘He’d have no use for a warrior’s charm. He didn’t want to be invincible!’
‘Still, it needs explaining,’ Kite persisted. ‘Look at it this way. If it wasn’t him the midwives saw, who was it? I’m afraid we have to think about the possibility that it might have been someone or something he’d run into earlier – someone who took his cloak from him, perhaps.’ He paused to see how Precious Light would respond to that suggestion, but she did not so much as flinch. ‘It could be you next,’ he added quietly. ‘Anyone capable of what these creatures have done is a
